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Meta: Stepping back into a classroom after a year of remote learning comes with challenges. Here’s how building a sense of family and community can help.
After a year or more of distance learning, you and your students are all coming back together in a brick-and-mortar classroom. It’s an exciting time, and while worries about COVID-19 still loom, many teachers are enjoying getting back to interacting with their students in person and having more authentic interactions.
Of course, the return to classrooms comes with its challenges. One of the most notable difficulties is re-building that community atmosphere among your students because they’re used to the isolation of a computer screen. Try these strategies to build a true classroom family this year.
You don’t have to try to trick your students into bonding with each other. Like you, they want to have a positive and welcoming atmosphere in the classroom, so why not bring them in on the effort?
Create a classroom charter with your students, allowing them to request rules that they want to include in order to develop the type of environment they want. You can include non-negotiable rules of your own, too, but bringing the students into the process will help them invest in the classroom atmosphere and take more accountability for it.
Kids bond with each other whether they get to know each other, so consider incorporating a “get to know you” exercise into each day or each session. Have a prompt on the board when kids enter the class, such as, “If you could be any food, what food would you be?” or “What’s your dream vacation?” Depending on your time constraints and class size, you could have each student give a short answer or call on a few students at random to answer.
Group projects are a fantastic way to get students to branch out of their friend groups and get to know other classmates. Particularly in the early part of the year, try to incorporate more group activities into your lesson plans. Make sure you’re choosing the groups, though, so students don’t stick with the same groups every time.
Like we mentioned, there’s no need to build your classroom family in a sneaky way. Every student is in the same boat - making the tough transition from digital learning to in-person learning. Why not talk about it?
Have an honest discussion about the transition, asking students to share some parts of digital learning that they miss and some parts of in-person learning that they’re eager to enjoy. In this same discussion, talk about the differences in how students need to behave during in-person learning, reminding them that there’s no “mute” button that lets them have sideline chats and that they need to be more active and engaged.
No matter how hard your students were working when the COVID-19 pandemic forced them into distance learning, the transition back to in-person learning will always be a challenging one (as it is for you, too). The strategies above can help you use this as a bonding opportunity among your students who are all going through that same transition, paving the way for a collaborative and positive classroom environment.
For more insights about making the most of your transition or about other ways to enhance your classroom, reach out to our skilled consultants today.